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Outlook Bleak For NASA, Space Center Jobs

BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. — There is more uncertainty Thursday morning for the thousands of people who work at the Kennedy Space Center.

The President is killing NASA's plans to return to the moon and the program to develop the next generation space shuttle.

If NASA does not launch Ares rockets or anything else after the shuttle retires, more than 7,000 jobs could be lost at the Kennedy Space Center.

The President's budget includes an extra $6 billion for NASA, which will increase its budget to $100 billion. However, there is no funding for any new shuttle missions after 2010, and that money does not include funding for the Ares rocket which was supposed to take man back to the moon.

"We're struggling because we don't know what we're going to be asked to do next and that's very unsettling for the workforce," said Charles Boldin, NASA Administrator.

Eyewitness News found out the Obama administration wants NASA to start working with private companies to develop rockets that can ferry American astronauts into space.

Hundreds of people who worked on the shuttle have already been laid off and NASA's administrator says those jobs will likely never come back.

"We're not going to do things the way we did them. People who processed vehicles, for example, shuttles to go to the International Space Station or go into low-Earth orbit, those jobs are never coming back because we're not going to have a shuttle to process," said Boldin.

NASA's administrator says the sooner the agency has a task, the sooner it can move on and transition to other tasks.

Congressman Bill Posey says he will fight to keep the moon rocket program alive because he feels President Obama is breaking a campaign pledge to keep America first in space.

Previous Stories: January 27, 2010: Ares Rocket Moon Program Might Be Shut Down

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